Who Invented the Flamethrower?

A new fave comedian of mine, the late George Carlin, on one of my favourite weapons, just for the sheer sick mindedness of those who came up with it. Still, they could do with it in those caves in Afghanistan (despite what Carlin says the US apparently got rid of them shortly after Vietnam)...

The First 1000 Followers..Seth's Blog

According to my  big brother's blog, the critical number of fans, customers, subscribers, and presumably followers, is 1000! If you keep those 1000 happy, everything will take care of itself. So, just another 999 followers to go, who will be next!!!

Strange Laws in Tallinn

It transpires that we have to keep the pavement outside our (communal) house clear, or relatively so, of snow. There's actually a chance of Tallinn city government, down at heel as it is, fining owners for failing to do so!
Luckily the Puumaja is equipped with snow shovels and the like for performing this public service, though I've managed to avoid it so far, the neighbours keep beating me to it! But I'm a busy man..

On This Day 344 Years Ago

...some things are everlasting..
December 25th 1665: "To church in the morning, and there saw a wedding in the church, which I have not seen many a day; and the young people so merry one with another, and strange to see what delight we married people have to see those poor fools decoyed into our condition, every man and woman gazing and smiling at them."

Hilarious Xmas Traditions

Tim Flowers is an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher based in the capital city of one of the baltic states. He is 42 years old. His previous job was working for the Post Office (main sorting office - as a superintendent) and this excellent and relevant background has given him a good grasp of the fundamentals of the English language, and the art of teaching it to others. He hails, as he likes to say, from Northamptonshire in England, a very glamorous part of the world indeed, and so is not at all out of place mingling with the glitterati of the Old Town where he hangs out on a Friday or Saturday night. He likes beer.
It's Christmas time, mistletoe and wine and so I thought that I'd ensure that I was worth every last penny of the fairly sizeable amount that the students have spent on my 'lessons' by finishing off term with a list of unusual, and really very amusing, xmas traditions from around the world. They must be true because I found the list on one of my colleague's desk, which was I think a copy of a copy of a copy of something from a now-defunct ESL website called "English language drop in shop" or something like that, I dunno I've never actually used the internet to put together teaching materials; my genius lies within the confines of my own cerebral cortex, ever able to come up with a dazzling array of explanations, games and anecdotes to keep them coming back for more (at least until the end of the course).
Anyway, here they are, brace yourself:

• In Luxembourg, children must skip anti-clockwise around an old, dead cat-sock (whatever that may be) before they can receive their present.
• Christmas is actually celebrated on 14th June in Kiribati. This is because it is in the Southern Hemisphere and, due to time zone differences, the day corresponds with 25th December in the Northern Hemisphere.
• A traditional Christmas dinner in England consists of turkey, cranberry sauce and, titter, mince pies, which aren't really pies at all, more like something like a giant jaffa cake.
• In Scotland, Christmas is called "Hogmanay" and culminates in the ritual slaughter of a pretend haggis.
• Instead of Father Christmas, children in Armenia can look forward to their presents being delivered by a spotty youth on a BMX.
  
• Due to a bye-law dating back to the regime of Oliver Cromwell, which has somehow been overlooked and remains on the statute book, the residents of Twickledrie in Southern Scotland are forbidden to celebrate Christmas.
• In Latvia, it is customary to drink Riga Balzams, an unholy concoction sold in strange-looking bottles, with holly sprigs.
  

So, looks like the final lesson's gonna be a laugh a minute.

Axe and Thou Shalt Receive

Canfield, Proctor, Nightingale, Zagler, Hill, Robbins, Tracy, Aaron... step aside please..there's a new success guru in town! Walt Gleeson is a highly successful, internationally renowned author of motivational books and CDs and other products. With a career spanning over half a decade, he has enthralled readers all over the world, from Alaska to Florida and from Hawaii to Rhode Island, with such titles as You Can Do It!, You Can Do It! Too, Literally Make Your House Work For You and Become a Millionaire Whilst On The Toilet.

I just had to tell you about something interesting that happened to me the other day. I was waiting in transit at the Hatfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, when I noticed an elderly black gentleman sitting next to me reading a book. He was about my age, and I was just reflecting on how little we had in common, when he turned to me and said "you know, you want something real bad, all you godda do is axe. Axe and thou shalt receive".

This was undoubtedly the greatest meeting of minds in human history and the best piece of advice received by anyone ever, and naturally it just had to be yours truly Walt Gleeson. It's true. All you have to do is indeed ask and you will definitely receive everything you ask for. OK, God works in mysterious ways, and it may not be in exactly the way you anticipated. For example, you might ask for a Ferrari 355 in yellow and in fact receive a 355 page long yellowing copy of a biography of Lolo Ferrari, but that's just as good surely, so quit complaining.

It struck me just how far the negro has come since the bad old days of segregated buses, ad hoc lynchings and "no taxation without representation", I'm so glad that white people sorted out all the mess for them and we can all sleep easier now.

I realised that this message was sent to me for a reason, and that this man was, in a very real sense, working through me to reach my wider audience in some kind of synergy of binary-creative outputting with divine concretization.

I later beat a hasty retreat when I discovered he was a muslim.

Yo! Aksk!

Walt

I'm Not a Twat

Forgot just how great the Armando Ianucci show was. Ok his neuroses aren't quite as universal as I'd once thought, some things would translate well here in Estonia and others just wouldn't come up on the radar at all.
But it's perhaps the best stuff he's done, even more than the sublime Time Trumpet.

More Excruciating Clichés

Following my list of pet peeve clichés or unnecessary or overused phrases which can be viewed here, it's nice to see that others feel the same way.

This list focuses on the worst office phrases (by the way, why stop at 10?) but could equally be applied to everday life.

By the way is it a cliché to use the word cliché now?

One Of Our Boys Is Missing - Chapter 2, Hero in the Neighbourhood, Part One

Charlie 'Terminal' Moraine is a former special forces soldier who served in the legendary (especially since it's now defunct, along with most of the legendary British Army regiments) 53 Assault Reconnaisance Squadron in some of the world's hot spots (well they were hotspots if you were a special forces operative anyway) including Northern Ireland, Oman, Columbia at the height of the drugs war, and Chelmsley Wood in the West Midlands. The Puumaja Crew is proud to present, in serial form, his new book, 'One Of Our Boys Is Missing', covering his life story and over 20 years in the front line of one of the deadliest units since the Ottoman Janissaries.

Chapter two opens with Charlie's embarkation on a journey which was ultimately to culminate in killing loads of people, though nothing hinted at that yet.

So there I was, three months short of my eighteenth birthday, packing my kit ready for the trip down to Fedioukine Barracks, at Thrushingfold Depot in Oxfordshire. I had my travel warrant, sports kit, civvy clothes, and not much else.

The last few days at home I’d been doing a lot of reflecting; this is the point where, if this was on TV, a faded sequence of home movies would kick in - washing the car, with someone hilariously picking up a sud-coated sponge and throwing it playfully at another family member; my brother giving me a pummeling, then breaking off when he realized the camera was on him and hugging me and pretending we were the best of friends; one of my sister’s moodily slamming the door of her room in the camera’s face; no doubt the scene bookended with a fade-in of a jangly number by the Beach Boys or the Byrds.

But we’re not on TV and in the event it didn’t get much more sentimental than simply going out and getting lashed about five nights in a row. I was feeling a little bit unsettled, but I decided to repress this in the interests of playing up to what a hero I was and generally gobbing off about it. The last night came, to the pub as usual. I felt a bit guilty as my family had arranged a ‘going away’ dinner, which I proceeded to shovel down as I had an urgent appointment with John Barleycorn to get to.

The next morning, and with the mother of all hangovers, I did a final sweep of the house to check I hadn’t left anything, and felt my heart quite literally in my mouth, which made talking very difficult, as I came down the stairs and into the blinking sunlight, the taxi’s diesel engine idling, reminding me it was best to make this short. My mum and sisters presented me with an assortment of goodies - jam, books and the like, which I hid at the bottom of my bag and ditched before I reached the depot. I felt a few jabs of remorse, but the reality was I was going into the world of the military, a million miles away from the civvy world of jam and books, and I just couldn't risk the embarrassment of being busted as a secret reader. I did however find space for Quentin, my childhood teddy bear, and I'd even made him a little cammo suit. I had to keep him well under wraps though, and designed a secret compartment in my bag for the purpose - this was real contraband.

I'd like to be able to say that my father broke down when I left, chewing the flagstones in a display of abject anguish, and pounding his fists into the ground wailing 'why, why, why?' but in fact he just said 'good luck', and gave me a firm handshake. He was never one for goodbyes. But it was sad to be leaving the family fold, however dysfunctional they might have at times been, they were soon going to resemble the Von Trapps in comparison with the new 'family' I was joining.

All the neighbours turned out for my send off, and I felt like the most important person in the world, like Chistopher Columbus or someone, leaving for terra incognita. I reality I probably looked more like Christopher Robin, laden down with my little pack and sauntering off, naive, innocent, and with locks which were far too long and curly for my own good. As I shut the door of the taxi, I wondered when I'd next see them all again and how much I'd have changed (probably at Christmas and my hair would be shorter, and I'd be fitter).

The taxi pulled away, and, before I had time to warn the driver, shot over the give way sign at the crossroads at the bottom of our close, broadsiding into an early morning milkfloat, sending bottles full and empty crashing all over the place. The milk float driver was incensed, and in the ensuing argument between him and the cabbie I made my way back, feeling very foolish.

‘Come on I’ll take you’ my dad said – buying some extra time with the old man made things a little easier.

To be spun out some more...

If you missed the last installment, it's here

How to Stop a Kitten That Keeps Biting You

A vexed question indeed. I've found that keeping a big water spray thing, the kind that you use for ironing, to hand and giving it a blast every time seems to be working. Another ploy is to have a big tin of coins and shake it once, vigorously every time they nip you. The downside is if you don't have these cumbersome things to hand, and I don't always, and get it immediately you've been violated (or better still just before) the stupid thing doesn't seem to make the connection and just thinks it's being sprayed/rattled for no particular reason.
Good luck!

Origins of the Estonian Language Part 2

..see yesterday's post for the preamble..
As noted, old woman who swallowed a fly style, Estonian falls in the Baltic-Finnic sub-group of the Finno-Lappic sub-group of the Finno-Volgaic sub-group of the Finno-Permic sub-grop of the Finno-Ugric sub-group of the Uralic group of languages!
It's spoken in, er, Estonia, with emigre communities in the kind of places you'd expect to find them, by a bit more than a million people, and as a second language by a good couple of hundred thousand people from the "Russian" community in Estonia, plus, in tiny numbers, attempts at speaking it as a second (or third or fourth) language by those from other parts of the world mad enough to live here.
The language was standardised towards the end of the nineteenth century, with the South Estonian dialect (centred on the University town of Tartu) losing out to the Northern dialect (centred on the capital, Tallinn). Apparently there's still a strong difference today but I haven't spent enough time in South Estonia to catch it. There are also apparently strong dialects in the islands, notably Saaremaa. More than that, there are at least a couple of distinct, but closely-related languages, spoken largely or wholly within the confines of the Estonian border (both in the South East of the country in fact) namely Võru and Setu. I have no idea about these two.
As I have said, Estonian is quite closely related to Finnish, though the two aren't mutually intelligle. That many people in Tallinn can speak Finnish is largely down to tourism and the fact that Finnish TV could be received, presumably illegally, in the latter decades of the Soviet occupation, Helsinki being only 80km across the sea.
It shares the large number of inflectional cases as well, and the endings are similar, but not the same.
For much of its history, Finland was a province of Sweden, being ceded to Russia after the Napoleonic wars as a semi-autonomous grand Duchy, whereas Estonia came under the German orbit. Thus, German influenced Estonian (but not Finnish) profoundly, and Swedish much less (though there was some influence, especially in the islands where Swedish speakers resided until WW2. German lexis, paricularly concerning matters of governance, bureaucracy and the church, flooded the Estonian language and we still have many of them today (a few examples: "kirik" (church), "kraad" (degree, as in temperature), "plats" (town square)..).
The standardisation of the alphabet must have come a bit later than that of grammar; on visiting the bank of Estonia museum (more promising than it sounds) I noticed that on some of the early bank notes from the first period of independence (after WW1), twenty (viiskümmend in modern Estonian) was written wiiskümmend, i.e. using the German 'w' as a 'v' sound, and I'm told that the German double 's' letter was also used.
The unique letter 'õ' in Estonian, which causes problems for foreign learners, is something that sums up the language in general. Very difficult to reproduce accurately or even to distinguish from the more familiar "ö" sound. For instance, the Puumaja being located on Õle street, I'm constantly having to say "yeah that's what I just said" in response to corrections at my attempt to pronounce the street name. Apparently even some Estonians have a problem with it, most notably from Saaremaa where people, presumably due to the Swedish influence noted above, tend to default to the "ö" letter, much to the amusement of the rest of the country. This was lampooned in the film "Malev". In terms of its sound, the spoken language is, to the uninitiated ear, quite lilting and scandanviany sounding, though not as much as Finnish, and also has a certain breathy quality due to the high incidence of aspirated 'h' sounds (which I assume Russians have as much difficulty with as I do with pronouncing their 'kh' (as in 'ya khachoo') sound.
Despite the old stereotype of Estonians being slow, most people speak quite quickly, although sounds aren't run together as much as they usually are in English or Russian.
In general it's a very hard language to learn, exacerbated by the fact that people here speak such good English, though any efforts will usually be well received, and presumably something of a novelty, though the disappointing tendency, as in the other two baltic states, to be used as a pawn in the "these Russians who can't speak Estonian/Latvian/Lithuanian who've been living here since .." gripe.
Now on to actually learn the language rather than pontificating about it...

Origins of the Estonian Language Part 1

...go back in time five or ten years and tell the then-me that I'd have been posting items with headers like this and see a very perplexed man..
The Uralic languages, which Estonian forms an albeit-small part of, are a language "family" of about 39 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people. In this Estonian differs from the languages of the other two baltic states, which belong to, and in fact are the only extant examples of, the baltic sub-group of the vast Indo-European family.
For historical reasons there are Hungarian speakers in neighbouring countries including Romania and the Ukraine.
As the name suggests, it has been postulated that these languages emerged somewhere in or near the Urals, a range of apparently unprepossessing mountains (though I've not been - yet) which have been lifted from relative obscurity as marking the delineation of Europe and Asia. This has however been disputed and some have placed the original homeland of the Uralic languages either to the South or West.
You may see Estonian listed as a "Finno-Urgic" language, in fact this is the more common classification for the layman or woman at least. I find this designation a little cumbersome; it hyphenates Finnish and Hungarian (or "ugric") which, as anyone who's seen or heard both will struggle to comprehend since they bear no resemlance to one another at all. Furthmore it leaves Estonian out of the equation along with a large range of languages spoken across, for the most part, North-Western Russia, but also including the various languages of the Sami people (formerly known as "Lapps"). Conversely there is nothing more in the "ugric" part of that designation bar something called "Ob Ugric"; whereas there are zillions of Finnic languages. Estonian and Finnish have a whole lot more in common, a similar inflectional system (though Finnish has 2 cases more and slightly longer case endings) and a lot of vocabulary, often concerning things like geographical features which have been around forever, seemingly either the same (e.g. kala (fish), maa (country/land)) or very similar (Ranta (Fin.)/Rand (Est.)=beach; Saari (F.) / Saar (E.) = island, Joensuu (F.) / Jõesuu (E.) = both towns meaning "mouth of a river" etc.).
Aside from all their differences, the Uralic languages have such features in common as the large set of cases noted above, no verb to have (you simply say "on/by/at etc. me there is..." a bit like in Russian, no grammatical gender (thank God), and the stress always falling on the first syllable (much easier than Russian or Lithuanian then).
A simplified breakdown of classifications is:
Samoyedic
Finno-Ugric
Hungarian (Magyar)
Ob Ugric (Ob Ugrian)
Finno-Permic (Permian-Finnic)
Permic (Permian)
Finno-Volgaic
Finno-Lappic
Sami languages
Baltic-Finnic
Estonian
South Estonian (including Mulgi and Tartu)
Võro (Voro, Võru, Voru; including Seto or Setu)
Finnish (and variants)
Ingrian (Izhorian) — Nearly extinct
Karelian
Livonian, Vepsian, Votic, all nearly extinct, incidentally Livonian is/was confined to one small region of the Kurzeme peninsular in Latvia.
Source, if you're interested: Wikipedia, of course!

The Puumaja Mees Is Unwell and Will Return Soon

Cold Weather

According to the thermometer on the car it was -14 degrees in the afternoon yesterday. Anyway it felt cold, but it's kinda nice too, a proper season too. Got the wood burning fire going daily now in the puumaja, which means I'm gonna run out of wood soon. Hopefully there's somewhere that will sell me some more..

Top Ten Stones Songs

Just a random list, which more or less fizzles out not long after Brian's demise..
1) Come On - simply as it was the first. Great harmonica work too.
2) 19th Nervous Breakdown - fantastically bitchy lyrics.
3) Under My Thumb - relatively sophisticated chord progression for the time, brilliantly evil (note to self, stop using '-ly' adjectival qualifiers, or whatver they are).
4) You Can't Always Get What You Want - so true.
5) Lady Jane - I was never sure if this was a reference to Lady Jane Grey, but it's a nice idea.
6) Ruby Tuesday - kinda renaissancey sound that an American band would never be able to pull off.
7) Stupid Girl - simple, get the impression they wrote, recorded and finished it in about two hours and that was all it needed.
8) Sympathy for the Devil- Purely due to the sentiment and the historical references to the Russian Revolution etc.
9) Start Me Up - great subject matter for a mainstream song, 'you make a dead man come' - just admirable.
10) Connection - from the Between the Buttons Album, again something that was probably intended as a filler and yet pisses all over most bands' finest tunes.

On This Day 341 Years Ago

[...ie 14th December 1668..]

This day I hear, and am glad, that the King hath prorogued the Parliament to October next; and, among other reasons, it will give me time to go to France, I hope.

[..would that it were that modern day monarchs in England would prorogue Parliament, preferably until twentington o'clock on the 33rd May.]

Excellent Way to Learn Russian

Since I've lived in all three of the Baltic States at various times over the past four years, it's not escaped my notice what, at times, a useful lingua franca Russian still is here. Instead of three languages of notable complexity and exclusivity (Estonian is usually plonked in a completely different language group than the other two, although it shares some items of vocabulary with Latvian) one, admittedly also difficult language, caters for all three. Not that it does exactly.The younger people often tend to learn English instead, and it's probably only possible to communicate on a superficial level with most balts in the language of the USSR, particularly here in Estonia (though presumably fine for the substantial 'Russian' population here). But, well, a lot of people can speak Russian here.
Viewing my inability to make progress in Russian bar more or less learning the alphabet plus a few daft and hackneyed words of phrases as little short of scandalous, and possibly a hindrance to getting by here (along with languishing Captain Scott style on the intermediate plateau in Estonian) it was definitely on one of my various lists as something worth doing. Forunately I got hold of the Michel Thomas method Russian courses about a month ago and haven't looked back since. As a part-time language teacher, this method had always held a certain amount of significance, or at least had done since I discovered it (via the German courses, and well before I was a language teacher). Thomas was of Polish-Jewish origin who, it is reported, discovered the deep and largely untapped potential of the brain when, of all things, he was being brutally tortured by the Gestapo (he was apparently a French Resistance agent) and discovered an ability to block out pain. I'll gladly leave that part to Michel but after the war he used his ability to extract confessions from former nazis under interrogation, this time without the use of violence, and subsequently opened a language school for the beautiful people, in Beverley Hills.
Actually it seems he was no snob, opening up his doors to school kids who'd been dubbed no hopers and seeing them make enormous progress.
I won't say anything about the method 'cos I don't think I could do it justice, except to say it's fun, if you can credit that. I've completed the foundation and 'advanced' courses (which isn't really advanced although gets you putting together, after less than 10 hours in total, constructions which might take others months or even years) and moved on to the 'vocabulary' course (which isn't really vocabulary, but a lot of essential grammar, guess they didn't want to scare people off). They're even available electronically , so you don't need to wait for a package from amazon.
I'm now speaking in Russian in shops from time to time where needed and looking forward to being able to read newspapers (which should be able to do by the time I've finished the vocab course) and speaking to real people.
Oorah!

Something for the List

Anyone that knows me, which is noone, will know that I have a penchant (relatively new-found) of making lists of things to do and ticking them off (or losing the list). Well, this will well and truly put a stop to, not the behaviour, but at least the random pieces of paper flying around. It's called 'Teux Deux' (as in 'to do') and it's great. Well, I say this, I haven't actually tried it out yet, but it's on the list! Of course it's far from the only electronic to do list app; I previously have used gmail's diary function, though that's not great for to do items (but excellent as a diary) as they get sidelined a bit in favour of the daily diary entry but this one seems really helpful and functional, enabling you to move things around if you don't get to do them on a particular day (or at least move them forwards - naturally you can't move back in time) cross them off, delete the crossed-off items OR leave them up if you like to feel pleased with yourself at how much you've achieved, etc. Of course you, as I, may have used other apps at work, but largely because you've been told to. What's nice about this is it's your own. Enjoy. Glad I managed not to call this post 'what a teux deax' or something hysterical like that.

On This Day 349 Years Ago

My wife and I up very early this day, and though the weather was very bad and the wind high, yet my Lady Batten and her maid and we two did go by our barge to Woolwich (my Lady being very fearfull) where we found both Sir Williams and much other company, expecting the weather to be better, that they might go about weighing up the Assurance, which lies there (poor ship, that I have been twice merry in, in Captn. Holland’s time,) under water, only the upper deck may be seen and the masts.

Captain Stoakes is very melancholy, and being in search for some clothes and money of his, which he says he hath lost out of his cabin.

[that would make me pretty melancholy too-ed]

I did the first office of a justice of Peace to examine a seaman thereupon, but could find no reason to commit him.

[not sure what form this examination might take! - ed]

This last tide the Kingsale was also run aboard and lost her mainmast, by another ship, which makes us think it ominous to the Guiny voyage, to have two of her ships spoilt before they go out. After dinner, my Lady being very fearfull she staid and kept my wife there, and I and another gentleman, a friend of Sir W. Pen’s, went back in the barge, very merry by the way, as far as Whitehall in her. To the Privy Seal, where I signed many pardons and some few things else.

From thence Mr. Moore and I into London to a tavern near my house, and there we drank and discoursed of ways how to put out a little money to the best advantage, and at present he has persuaded me to put out 250l. for 50l. per annum for eight years, and I think I shall do it.

[Think I might put out a little money to the best advantage - still it's easy what you can discourse about whilst drinking!!-ed]

Thence home, where I found the wench washing...,

[good stuff..]

..and I up to my study, and there did make up an even 100l., and sealed it to lie by. After that to bed.

[Me too-goodnight, ed.]

Cultural Reducator TIm Flowers

Tim Flowers is an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher based in the capital city of one of the baltic states. He is 42 years old. His previous job was working for the Post Office (main sorting office - as a superintendent) and this excellent and relevant background has given him a good grasp of the fundamentals of the English language, and the art of teaching it to others.
He hails, as he likes to say, from Northamptonshire in England, a very glamorous part of the world indeed, and so is not at all out of place mingling with the gliterati of the Old Town where he hangs out on a Friday or Saturday night.
He likes beer.

Managed to get through a whole lesson today without once using the textbook. Now, your run of the mill ESL teacher wouldn't be able to do this, mind, but I can wing this as I've been doing it so long, and I managed to get it down to a fine art, with just me talking for an hour and a half about US politics, something I know a lot about, the knowledge from which I know my students are all really keen to benefit
I see myself as a cultural re-educator; for years people in this country were cut off by a system which, whilst sound in its principles (Marx being a really sound person, something I know all about having read the first 11 pages of "Das Kapital" on the trolleybus before proceeding to sound off about it to all and sundry) was deformed in its execution. Trotsky 'now there would have been your man, such a shame they had to shoot him. Anyway as I was saying before I interuptted [sic - ed ](my flow of genius, these people who I teach really know nothing. They're all racist (probably) and they've hardly lived or seen anything of the real world. Well, one or two of them go on regular business trips to North America and the far east, and another just got back from a holiday in the Cayman Islands, but they're just tourists, they've no idea about how it really is for ordinary people. Forgot to set homework, as the students had already packed up and started leaving before I'd finished (we'd only overrun by about 14 minutes), oh well, homework is the Sanatogen of the masses, I don't believe in it (and I don't want to have to mark it either), surely just the honour of having me as their teacher is enough? Now, just for a quick ciggie break before I announce, unsolicited and uninvited, to everyone in the staffroom that that lesson I just taught was 'shit' (it wasn't really) though not because of me (I spent a full 8 minutes preparing it) but because of demotivated, unenthusiastic and lazy students...javascript:void(0)

Irritating and Hackneyed Things People Say and the Corresponding Punishment

Just a short run down (urghh, hating this already) of a select few of those lazy, placemaker cliches that even fairly educated people come out with just for the sake of emitting sounds from their vocal tract in an effort to numb the pain and emptiness, and the penalty that befits...
1) "At the end of the day". Ok I know this is figurative but that doesn't alter the fact that it's at best, a lazy, lazy verbal crutch and synonymous with "this is my opinion and/or line or sales pitch, nothing you say or do is going to alter it".
PENALTY: Firing Squad. At dawn. No, better still, at the end of the day.
2) "If you look at it logically"..as opposed to what? What are you trying to say, that your interlocutor is an irrational and neurotic individual who needs to be brought back to reality with a bang, courtesy of your incisive (and deeply patronizing) intervention.
PENALTY: To be patronized to death and canonized as, as Victor Lewis Smith dubbed Esther Rantzen, the Patron Saint of Patronizers.
3) "I don't want to make an issue of this". Yes you do. Insofar as I understand this meaning of the word 'issue', which is to say, point of contention or debate, it might be better to at least be honest and say "I'm not going to discuss this on an equal footing with you since you are not my equal at least in this case, so you are going to do what I say". Or words to that effect.
PENALTY: "I don't want to make an issue out of your death with torments..."
4) "It's just one of those things." Found myself guilty of this committing this affront to several hundred years of accumulated ingenuity and inventiveness in the English language, only the other day. I was talking about Estonia's occupation as part of the USSR as being 'just one of those things'. One of what things? What the hell do you mean? Furthermore, the cliche if I understand it correctly is intened as dismissing whatever it's being tagged to as being unavoidable or even insignificant, which was not what I meant, and which is why therefore this phrase is moribund - if it can't be avoided or isn't very important, then why bother commenting on it at all, you're just wasting time.
PENALTY: Death? Well it's just one of those things isn't it....
5) "History repeats itself" - ok, when the Spanish Armada comes round again or we literally reinvent the wheel then I'll subscribe to that, otherwise STFU. As an aside, a writer (unfortunately I've forgotten the reference - could be Andrew Marr) played on this beautifully once when he/she wrote that history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes..
PENALTY: Time for Torquemada to repeat himself.
6) "Sweden has the highest suicide rate in the world"...urghh..zzz...why do people say that? Even if it weren't merely trumpeting what a million people (or far more) have said in (formerly) smoky pubs up and down the land (I know, I know, a cliche too, at least I didn't put 'length and breadth..'), what conclusions are we to draw from it and what possible comfort can it bring to anyone regardless of whether they've been touched by suicide or no. Apart from anything, it's patently not true, at least according to wikipedia, though this info itself is out of date and seemingly impossible to corroborate.
PENALTY: deported to Sweden.
7) Finally, the phrase which really should have followed the grottiest, most one dimensional EastEnders character to the grave, but sadly didn't: "No offence" or it's even more florid bastard halfling "no disrepsect to yourself". The get out clause of all get out clauses (along with "it's meant ironically"). Surely by making such a statement you're in fact indicating that, yes, I do indeed intend to cause offence; either that or "oh shit I've just realized I said that to the wrong person, or when the wrong person was in earshot" thus indicating a certain amount of Janus-facedness since if that person hadn't been present then the get out clause would have been unnecessary.
PENALTY: To be reduced to tears by as sustained and ruthless verbal barrage, punctuated, of course, with the "no offence" disclaimer.

Something Like an Inverted Pareto Principle

According to my big brother Seth, if you give a group of people a certain job or task, 2 per cent of it will make a balls of it. That's not quite how he said it being the urbane and refined wunderkind that he is, but that's what he meant.
I have to say, I know he's American, but this figure seems very low to me indeed. Here in Estonia I'd expect something a little higher (but not a lot) since it means 98 people out of a 100 will get it right if he's right, and if that were the case there wouldn't be quite so many people wandering round with long faces, moaning about the bad 'economical and financical (sic) situation'...it's got to be more than 2 per cent of the population's fault!
Maybe I'm just pessimistic though. Or maybe most of that 2 per cent happens to find themselves in positions of responsibility and authority when we'd be better off turning the tables and all having a crack at things.
I think that's what happened in Britain during the war. Everyone had a crack at being foreign secretary, or chancellor or whatever, just for about a month at a time...

BFK Recommends Dodo - Shock

Benedict Francis-Kentigern, or BFK as we know him, is an affable motoring journalist of the old school. Dropping out of some big public school somewhere in England to pursue his passion of pretending to race cars, he's acquired such an array of tweed jackets with leather elbow patches, arran sweaters and empty travel sweet tins, that you can't help but ignore him. Look forward to BFK's occasional reports on motoring, cars, and what drives the people that drive them, in his section to be found somewhere on the site.
Hi gang, I just had to tell you about I new product which I'm really excited about and which has just arrived at the Puumaja. It's called Dodo Juice, and, despite it's name, isn't really made from a dodo nor is it primarily juice, but rather a vast range of hip-to-the-jive (or whatever the young people are saying nowadays) car detailing products.
Essentially, car detailing means keeping your car's interior and exterior uber-clean, and dodo juice focuses on the latter. No more ragged sponges from under the sink, and grit-swilling bucket of fairy liquid once every 3 months, you can now wash, clay ( to removed contaminants like bits of dead fly and deeply encrusted grime) polish, wax and protect your car, all using the Dodo Juice range.
In my opinion the waxes are the flagship products and they come in a selection of 8, four 'soft' waxes and four 'hard'. There's also a limited edition 'austintacious' range, which evokes memories of my old mini clubman days (well, I had a mini clubman key fob anyway).
These waxes look and smell very tempting (it was with a sinking feeling that my youngest grandaughter woke me up at zero-crack hundred hours when staying over the other weekend, saying 'Grandpa, this marzipan tastes funny'!) and have tropical themed names like 'Rainforest Rub' and 'Banana Armour' but there's a serious point to them. They contain Carnauba wax, derived from the leaves of a specific type of palm tree which grows in tropical latin america, and other natural ingredients including beeswax. This is what gives the waxes their protective oomph and helps to encourage passers by using your car's paintwork as a mirror.
There's a whole load more, including synthetic products called sealants, which perform a similar function to wax, quick detailing products like 'Red Mist', paraphernalia such as a huge furry glove nicknamed the 'wookie's fist' (for washing the car, it's a little more forgiving than a scouring pad I find) and even a spray called 'Time to Dry', which, believe it or not, speeds up the drying process after you've washed the car! Sunday afternoons in Shakespeare Drive will never be the same again, all the neighbours are going to want some Dodo Juice of their own now.
Well, they'll have to visit dodojuice.com to do that, or if in Estonia, they can always contact the Puumaja crew, who are now distributing this wonderful product, straight to your door if necessary. And...

ok that's enough plugging - ed

Don't See 'Old Dogs' at the Cinema..

..I beseech you. You'd be better off watching old dogs in the street, pissing against lamposts or shagging.

I should have guessed when I saw Robin Williams and John Travolta were going to be a in a 'comedy' featuring a dog, but no...in fact the dog premise is a lame tack on, an attempted metaphor I suppose but which just wastes everyone's time including those involved. This wouldn't pass the '10 minute test' chez the Puumaja, where my flatmate and I give TV1000's nightly offerings that exact amount of time to impress. A series of unrelated, poorly based 'japes' with these totally disgusting and un-cute 'cute' kids, continual screaming and shouting and overacting, bizarre visual gags and a denoument so predictable you could see it coming from the second or third minute, it was one of those rare movies that actually leaves me feeling angry.

As someone hilariously said about another turkey, Schindler's List is funnier...

Lesson learned, always read rotten tomatoes (which gave it 5 per cent!) or something very like it before checking out a movie and don't go to the cinema just for going to the cinema (especially if it's in Tartu and you live in Tallinn!).

On Religion

I got Hare Krishna'd the other day in the street in Tallinn, near Kaubamaja. Not for the first time...Still, far less likely to get mormonized here, than was the case in when I was working in Riga (which I'm now calling little Utah).
The guy who approached me was perfectly pleasant and not wearing any weird clobber. I later saw him having reeled someone in, a woman, they were speaking in Russian. I think that could be a part of the reason the mormons don't seem to meet with as much success, they're outsiders and, even if they may make some progress with members of the Russian community (as I think their organisation trains them up in that language, certainly all the mormons who've ever approached me have opened in Russian) they're still outsiders. Furthermore, approaching native Estonian speakers in the street in Russian isn't likely to endear yourself to them. It's just the way it is. Better to speak English.
I suspect the real reason is that Estonians simply aren't a very religious bunch at all; as you'll see, if you can find Estonia on a map, according to this survey they're right down there below even Sweden in non-belief in a deity, and coupled with a marked uneasiness with strangers makes for proselytizers having a pretty thin time of it here, especially in the winter!
I've been reflecting that, if this street proselytisation is valid (and I'm inclined to think it isn't, though if there's to be freedom of information I'm not sure how else one tackles that particular arena, for those that are genuinely interested but lack access to information) the 'correct' religion that a person could end up in might just be based on such happenstance of who you bumped into in the street. Which seems to me just wrong. No doubt they'd refer to that as God's will, providence etc, that this encounter happened. Which in some cases it could be - if the person was out looking for answers. On that other hand what if they were bludering along half drunk, or looking for a way to rebel against authority figures, or just to stand out from the crowd.
And this is my real beef with organised religion. Not that I think the whole thing is based on a lie; as an agnostic I don't believe you can prove one way or another about the existence of God, though from my own personal feelings and intuition there's something resounding down the ages, providing a basic moral framework (are there any countries where you get anything other than punished for murder, as murder?). There are truths to be found in all of the major religions and probalby most of the minor ones too. But...I believe, if you spend any time with people who claim to be representing an organized religion, sooner or later, you'll run into one or more of the following as the real reason behind their adherence:

1) cultural and historical (they were 'born a catholic' or whatever. Noone is born anything other than a baby human).
2) a badge (ie, 'you're not one of us').
3) to stand out ('my religion's different (ie better) than yours/the majority religion', etc etc).
4) to rebel ('my family were prods so I'm gonna spite them by converting to catholicism').
5) to conform ('my family are catholic and they'd never speak to me if I left the fold').
6) to get a sense of belonging ('catholics are different').
7) to get a sense of importance (you can 'be' somebody even if you're a nobody in everyday life).
8) to dominate others (religions vary hugely on hierarchies or the absence thereof, with catholicism way up there, islam much less so but with a nasty tendency to throw up self appointed seeming troublemakers. As an aside, this is a trait religions can share with the world of ESL teaching).
9) to prey (note spelling!) on others sexually (speaks for itself).
10) for something to do (especially for old ladies).
11) compelled to do it (forced attendance at 'worship', and I'm not only talking about the Taliban but this might include, in the US, court-mandated attendance at 12-step 'meetings', for example.
12) a sense of being a world changer, and almost messianic figure (Bono).
13) to proselytize (in islam it's called 'dawa'. In other words you get more kudos for the more people you hook in, and are really little more than a salesman or woman).
14) for the laughs (especially true of judaism!).
15) because you believe it is truth (ok this one's ok).

..there are probably loads of other reasons I haven't identified.

I'm not some pleb who's just watched a Richard Dawkins 'lecture' or something and proceeded to reel it off as if it's my own opinion; I've actually studied some of the major religions (including islam) in quite a lot of depth and even in the past been an active participant in (christian) communities, and as noted, I see myself as agnostic, not atheist.
I haven't really defined 'organized' and 'religion' and there's a certain vagueness here which doesn't make things any easier; indeed there collocation could be used to describe to a greater or lesser extent anything from the really major world religions, through to the smaller ones, social clubs, shamanistic local practices, crazy cults and even the 12 step groups of alcoholics anonymous and its clones.
This isn't an attempt to cause offence by dissing the various named and unnamed religions and I'd always welcome freedom of religious expression for all, including attire, right to worship, etc, something that you're unlikely to get as a dhimmi in some countries where islam prevails. But there has to be a trade off, including the right to criticize or portray religion and even God in a humourous light. But this has been raked over and over again enough in the media already, I'm not adding fuel to that fire..

On This Day 349 Years Ago...

From the pages of Pepys' diary, 4th December 1660 (Puumaja comments in [ ]).
"This day the Parliament voted that the bodies of Oliver, Ireton, Bradshaw &c, should be taken out of their graves in the Abbey, and drawn to the gallows, and there hanged and buried under it..."
[If I'm not mistaken, Oliver is none other than Oliver Cromwell, former East Anglian MP turned 'Lord Protector' of England, Scotland and Ireland and now somewhat out of favour; Henry Ireton was his son-in-law and a Parliamentary general, John Bradshaw, a judge who presided over the trial of Charles I. This episode concerns the 'execution' and mutilation of their corpses as an act of vengeance.]
"...which (methinks) do trouble me that a man of so great courage as he was, should have that dishonour, though otherwise he might deserve it enough".
[Little bit of politics, I assume Pepys kept his thoughts on this to himself (the diary was encrypted in fact). And people really did say 'methinks'!!!. I can't help thinking what a shame it is such things don't happen any more...digging up the body of out of favour politicians (former PMs spring to mind) and publicly hanging, drawing and quartering it in the middle of Westminster in the rush hour..well, you could charge money for tickets. Better than Simon Cowell anyway..]

Unattractive Enough to be a Model

I just saw a bit of a notably asinine program from the UK, one of those 'we're gonna have to let one of you go, and this time I'm afraid it's...', which is seemingly a sacred cow of a format nowadays. In this case it was models, or would-be models, and there were the requisite tears as one of the 'contestants', with a delightfully glamorous West Midlands accent, was told she was out.
Thing was, and I don't know if this is worth saying but anyway, noone's reading, I can see stacks of far, far more beautiful girls here in Tallinn every time I step out of the house practically.
I don't say this to boast, just I find it a bit frustrating how these people are held up as paragons of beauty when to my eyes they're very unappealing-looking, androgynous or bordering on ugly.
Maybe that's not the point, and models aren't here to provided titillation for males; fine with me, and I don't doubt that the objectification of women for men's pleasure is a bad thing, in which case would you please explain to me exactly WHAT they do to enrich our lives?
No doubt their critics are less kind; if they'd had any vestige of a personality it might have been something but they were equally or even more bland and off-putting in that regard too.
One of the 'judges' on the show perhaps encapsulated it best when he said, of one of the contestants, 'she looks like a model'.....so there it is, not she's beautiful or even just attractive. Provided she conforms to the industry standard that's already been set in stone, for the time being. A bit like saying this car looks like a car.

10 Heroes (relatively speaking) of Mine I've Outlived (at least in numbers of years - James Dean and Jimi Hendrix Guaranteed Not Included)

- Robert Johnson - musician
- Wing Commander Guy Gibson - Pilot
- John Bonham - musician
- Captain Laurence Oates - Explorer
- Francois Cevert - racing driver
- King Henry V of England - er, King. Actually he may have been slightly older depends on dates
- Jim Clark - racing driver
- Franz Schubert - composer
- Charlotte 'Marmalade Atikins' Coleman - actress
- Bobby Sands - political activist

...if I hang in another year or two I'll overtake Robbie Burns...

Noone Killed in Freak Accident And No Footage of Celebs in Compromising Situations Here

When trying to set up a business, I've noticed a phenomenon which I call SS- concentration-camp-guards-at-the-end-of-the-war syndrome, namely, that I've switched to attempting to get on the best terms with people I previously held in utter contempt. I've suddenly started having more sympathy for internet marketers, cold callers, even spammers in a way (no let's not go that far). Or at least I seem to feel I should do.
The logic behing this is that now the boot's on the other foot and I'm my own boss, surely now I have to go out and do all the networking, sales-y stuff and the like, something which fills me with a huge amount of dread and awe I don't mind saying.
So it was nice to hear confirmation from Seth that I was right all along and if I interpret my big brother correctly, that these people are indeed scum (not that he'd couch it in such terms, gent that he is).
Anyone who thinks it's ok to hit a hundred people at the same time, no matter who they are, on the grounds that if one of them replies it's paid for itself already, never mind the effect on the other 99 people, probably doesn't deserve a high place in the pantheon of worthwhile people.
In fact I wonder if the prostitute-card placers in central London phone boxes think along the same lines.
He opens by looking at the phenomenon of juicy headline writers reeling in even otherwise sensible people with promises of scandal and hype, hence the reverse heading of this post. Check it out.